


Fire Away

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Make it Worse [8]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e03 Harvest, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nick Stokes Whump, Well...almost whump, he's not physically hurt, just emotionally discouraged, like me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28363413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Nick failed his firearms exam because of a flinch. This is why.
Series: Make it Worse [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978048
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Fire Away

A splash of cold water gives him a quick refresh on his clammy, pale face but it’s not enough to pull him out of his state of shock that he’s denied being to everybody who’s placed their hand on his shoulder, asking if he’s okay.

The same shoulder with a pinched nerve that his head keeps...twitching towards. 

His hands, luckily, while still shaken are not stirred and he’s able to lift up a finger to trace the new shaved stripe in his hair.

Nobody has said anything about it so far, but he knows it’ll be coming soon enough. Knows that he’ll be teased and asked if he’s trying to imitate the racing stripes Greg Sanders had in his hair just a few years ago. 

He was already thinking of getting a haircut. Spicing things up in his otherwise mundane life. He could do with a fresh shave, too, as his finger traces down the side of his stubbly cheeks. 

Which gives him an idea for another sort of shave.

Why not just start over?

Nick watches as the reflected man loses the rest of his hair to equalize the uneven pattern of his scalp, and wonders where it all went wrong. 

Something wasn’t adding up until he found the broken tennis trophy on the shelf. The blood may have been wiped off, but the damage to the miniature racket still told him the story in a few remaining drops of blood trapped under the folds. 

Competition between brothers is something Nick’s very familiar with, though this case had taken it a bit too far. Two brothers fighting for their elderly mother’s love—the father long since passed, it was on both children to take care of the woman but based on his conversations with her, Nick gathered that she favored one son over the other. The younger of the two brothers, Caleb. The overachiever. The all star athlete, the valedictorian. 

The victim.

Meanwhile, the other brother, Jacob, meek and doting, was bending over backwards to take care of his precious mother, and his efforts were not only unnoticed, but judged upon by the mother, who had even dared to scold the poor man for not offering Nick a drink—because he was preparing her much needed medicine. The underappreciated eldest son, and while Nick couldn’t empathize with him, being the youngest in his own family and having more of an idea of what Caleb had gone through, he still had some sympathy for Jacob. The poor guy didn’t seem to have enough balls to stand up for himself, let alone stand up to his mother. Nick had tried to give him some words of encouragement, tried to steer him towards a nearby nursing home or the number of a hospice nurse, but Jacob refused, citing his duty of care to the snapping elderly woman. 

So he went back to the routine questions, when did he last see his brother, was there anybody who held any sort of ill will against him, where he was on the presumed night of the murder—and Jacob had  _ seemed  _ innocent enough. Seemed to be genuinely distraught over the loss of his little brother. Admitted they had their competitive streaks but ultimately leaned on each other and had each other’s backs, because “that’s what brothers do, right?” 

“That’s right,” Nick had smiled, more than happy to finally be able to share a small connection with the man. 

Nick was taking one final look around the house, walking around the well-kept time capsule of the victim’s room when he spotted the trophy on the shelf, and more importantly, the truth of what happened as the events started to play out in his head. A brother reaching his breaking point, overworked and underappreciated calling out the younger brother, who maybe did try to extend his hand only to pull it back once the insults started flying. A fight turned deadly once a weapon was introduced, a symbol of Caleb’s superiority to Jacob, the gold that proved him to be best while Jacob got  _ nothing.  _ It was so obvious, yet still unexpected given Jacob’s behavior. 

Just as unexpected as the underestimated son pulling a gun on him.

“Alright...Nick Stokes, you’re up,” the firearms instructor calls into the sitting room, where members of the lab are gathered to take their annual firearm qualification exam. 

_ “Turn around and put your hands in the air,” Jacob panted. _

_ He was nervous, which makes him even more dangerous. Nick tried to surreptitiously press the emergency button on his radio, but found himself glued to the spot. _

He’s glued to his chair, even despite Warrick’s nudging.

_ “I’m not going to ask you again!” Jacob barked. _

“Stokes?” the instructor calls again. Nick clears his throat and raises a finger as he finally rises from his seat.

_ He finally turned around, reluctantly raising his hands on either side in surrender.  _

“Raise your weapon,” the instructor tells him after he puts on his safety gear.

_ “That gun on your waist, take it off and drop it!” Jacob shouted at Nick. _

_ “Okay, take it easy, man, just—” Nick tried to defuse the situation, calm the ticking bomb in front of him. _

He takes his first shot, hits it dead center of the target. 

_ “DROP IT!” Jacob screamed, his voice cracked exposing a weak spot, but he still shoved the gun closer in Nick’s direction, his trigger finger twitching and Nick let out an involuntary gasp. _

It’s been a while since he’s had to discharge his weapon. Or any weapon, for that matter, because Bobby Dawson usually does the honors when firing guns as part of ballistic processing.

_ Nick quickly unsheathed his gun from its holster and dropped it to the floor.  _

_ “K-kick it over here!” Jacob stammered. _

“Good, keep going,” the instructor encourages.

He hasn’t had much time to do any sort of practice, either. He’s either sleeping or he’s at work, whether that work is the lab, in the field, or in court.

An explanation, but not an excuse and he knows that.

_ “Get back! Up against the wall!” _

_ Nick dared to take a step forward. _

He grits his teeth and re-adjusts his position after a near miss of the target.

_ “Jacob, j-just listen to me for a minute—”  _

_ I’m a good listener. _

_ This isn’t the first time I’ve had a gun in my face. _

_ “You’re going to regret pulling that trigger.” _

He fires again, his eyes twitching, temple throbbing. He can’t get these damn bulky earmuffs and safety glasses off any sooner.

He shoots a little to the left.

_ As far as appeals for his life goes, he could have done better, but he realized the mistake he had always made; putting himself in front of the gun, using “I” in effort to make them see the value of his life, that he’s a human being, just like them. _

_ But in using “you,” he’s manipulating their conscience. The odds will shift in his favor as he gains more power through his words.  _

“Again,” the instructor commands. His glasses are fogging from the condensation coming from the sweat coating his face.

_ Besides, this guy was too skittish to pull through. Even more shaky than Nigel. _

_ “Just like you regret killing your brother.” _

"You got this," he says to himself.

_ Famous last words. _

He pulls the trigger, his body snapping in an involuntary flinch _ — _ his dominant hand nearly loses grip of the gun as his other flies up to the side of his face, hitting the invisible shelf behind him just as it did in that bedroom. As the bullet from his gun flies towards the target, another bullet whizzes above his ear, narrowly scraping his face and blasting a hole into the miniature golden torso of the trophy behind him. His heart stops beating and when it starts again going from zero to a hundred, he lets out a whimper that he can't control. 

An embarrassing display of the weakness he's always been ashamed of; his fears.  He bites down on his lip as he chuckles nervously, shooting an apologetic glance to the instructor with an unreadable face and no comfort to give. 

He clears his throat, resumes the correct firing stance, and squeezes the trigger with a sweating, trembling finger.

He misses.

Again.

* * *

“How’d you shoot?” Warrick asks, since Nick didn’t give him a chance to ask the day before at the range. 

“Rusty. They say I have a flinch,” Nick decides to play it off like it’s no big deal, because it’s not. 

“You and I need to go practice some, huh?” 

“Yeah, and when do we have time for that?” Nick bites back with a little more harshness than he really intended. “If we're not processing a scene or working evidence, we're in court.”

“Well, when they take your piece, you'll make time.”

As if he needs the reminder of that, more than aware of the comforting weight of his clipped holster, and fearful of its absence when he’s working in the field.

Although as if having his piece even mattered in... _ that  _ situation anyway. 

It was just a rough day, that’s all. His head wasn’t all in the game. 

But it will be next time. 

Maybe he can work something out with Grissom, duck out early and clock in some hours shooting beer bottles in the desert until the firing range opens for business.

“Nick, you failed firearms qualification. You can't be here,” Grissom says with an unexpectedly scrutinizing tone.

Guess leaving early is no longer an option.

“Oh, yeah, well, I’m taking it again the day after tomorrow, so I figured I could work,” Nick ties to explain, realizing how stupid he sounds as the words fly out of his mouth.

“Not in the field,” he hates how he can’t see Grissom’s eyes behind his sunglasses. Hates the chastising, authoritative tone that he hasn’t heard from the man in a while, actually—at least, not towards him. 

Even though his heart is quaking, he stands his ground.

“You’re serious?” he asks with a half chuckle, as if he’s waiting for Grissom to burst out laughing, telling him he’s just kidding and to get back to work.

But Grissom would  _ never  _ goof around like that.

“You’re in violation just carrying the weapon!” Grissom reminds him—he was hoping nobody would notice and yet Grissom’s pointing it out as if he was telling Nick the sky was blue.

Nick looks to Warrick with a gaping scoff, looking for his support but Warrick looks away. And he’s left alone.

“Copy that...I’ll be in the lab,” Nick peels off his sunglasses, looking up to Grissom with a silent plea in his eyes that goes unheard and he hangs his head, figurative tail between his legs as he slinks back to the lab. 

“Uh, Nick, let me catch a lift with you. There’s something going on with Lindsay,” Catherine catches up to Nick. 

“Yeah, no problem,” Nick mutters as they enter his car. 

“So I kind of missed it while I was on the phone, what, uh, what exactly happened?” Catherine asks after a few minutes’ silence, without even the radio to entertain them from the now dull sights of the Vegas streets they’ve been overexposed to.

“Not needed in the field,” Nick grunts.

“Is...everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Nick’s almost motionless, though his jaw is tight. “You?”

“Just...worried about Lindsay,” Catherine sighs. “You know, ever since Eddie died—”

“How does Grissom get off by sending me back to the lab?” Nick suddenly spurts out, his knuckles turning white as they wrap around the steering wheel. “He doesn’t even carry his own gun most of the time!”

“Perks of being a supervisor,” Catherine shrugs off.

“A-and what are the chances of something happening anyway? My job ain’t gun toting it’s collecting and processing evidence. Getting justice for the victims and their families—

“And packing heat along the way. C’mon, Nicky, I know you like having that power. You always have. Wear it like a badge of honor, and you’re just upset cause that honor is tarnished.”

“There’s a little girl  _ missing,  _ Cath. And Grissom’s putting me on the bench,” he runs a hand through the hair that’s no longer on top of his head, petting the soft buzz on top of his throbbing head instead.

“You’re not on the bench you’re just…”

“In the doghouse?”

“Playing inside for the day. And hey, you won’t have to hover over everyone’s shoulders waiting for results, you can just get them yourself.”

Nick gives her a dirty glance, and ends his half of the conversation. 

But still, he does his best to hold his head high, do what he can to help in a virtual sense, even if that’s acting as the middleman between the computer and his co-workers.

He’s not quite cut out for this. Maybe when he was younger, but as he grows older there’s only so much time he can spend in front of a computer screen in the same room for hours on end. His eyes straining, his legs going numb. He finds himself actually longing for a dumpster dive, because at least he gets to stretch his limbs and get a minor workout in the process of the manual labor that comes with field work. 

“Marlon Waylord, tier two, 38, black, lives alone, sometimes handyman and fits Jimmy Jones’ description,” Nick reads off the result of their narrowed search for the child predator under suspicion for abducting Alicia Perez.

Grissom sits back and smiles before leaving Nick with his wordlessly given so-called praise and giving Warrick a gentle nod to excuse them both from the room.

“Catch you later, man,” Warrick claps Nick’s shoulder, triggering a twitch that Nick tries to hide by stiffening his body, clenching his jaw and hunching his back. “Gonna go bag this scum.”

“Glad I was able to do  _ something  _ right,” Nick mutters under his breath. Grissom halts in the doorway as Warrick moves on after a brief study of the two men.

“Is there a problem, Nick?” Grissom asks with a heavy voice, his tone just as sharp as it was outside the convenience store. 

“I just...I don’t understand why I can’t be workin’ with everybody else, not like nobody else has a gun in case somethin’ happens, I could just...I don’t know, take cover. Hide behind Warrick,” he tries to joke, but there’s no trace of humor in either man’s face.

“But Nick, something did happen,” Grissom points out. “When  _ nobody  _ was around and I don’t think I need to remind you, you even had your gun.”

Nick scoffs and folds his arms.

“What do you think could have happened if you had it in your hand at the time? You think either one of you would have walked away?”

Nick’s eyes are watering, whether from the burn of the screen or from the fact that yes, he’s very aware of his own mortality—something he even tried to instill in an actual reckless Sara Sidle and he hates that he’s being thought of just as careless with his own life—he doesn’t know, but he does his best to pull the stinging water back in.

“...No. But that’s not the point, Gris, that happened weeks ago—!” 

“But it affected you nonetheless. Affected your judgment. Affected your  _ score,  _ which was a little...”

He doesn’t have to say the word.

_ Disappointing.  _

Nick holds his breath and balls his shirt sleeves into his fists, avoiding Grissom’s eyes as he tries to settle the building rage inside of him and getting sent to more than just the doghouse of the lab. 

“I know you’re tired, but it’s just...it’s a little concerning to me that not only are you going against the same book you’ve always kept your nose in, but you’re willing to risk your life for the sake of what? Dusting fingerprints on a car?”

“Saving a  _ life,  _ Grissom.”

“That’s not worth losing yours.”

“I’ve got  _ nothing  _ left to lose, anyway,” Nick says under his breath, clearing his throat and attempting to go back to work, but he instead falls into a hypnotic stare, glaring white numbers and letters jumbling and melting and he keeps his mouth shut for another minute before he speaks again—

“And you know what, you act like something bad’s gonna happen every time I cross that tape,” he begins in a flippant tone, but when he finally turns his head to fully address his boss, he’s gone.

* * *

He stares at himself in the mirror of the bathroom that he’s  _ not  _ hiding in, nope, not at all, before his retest. 

He once again traces the scorched strip on the side of his head, now only visible to nobody but himself and catches his finger—his  _ trigger  _ finger trembling so he balls his fingers into a fist, encapsulating the fleeting, floating ghost of a bullet whirring around his eardrum. 

There has to be a reason it missed. 

There has to be a reason he’s still here. 

There has to be a reason that he’s seemingly bulletproof, because the third time’s the charm and this was the third time he was held at gunpoint.

And  _ it missed. _

So that has to mean  _ something _ .

Right?

“Alright, Stokes! Fire away!”

At least this instructor seems to be less stuck up than the last one.

He wishes he was just as eager.

Determined to pass, yes, of course he is. He needs to get back to his job. His  _ real  _ job.

But not  _ eager  _ to do this all again, facing the one dimensional demon at the other end of the lane.

“Take a deeper breath,” the instructor advises, when she notices that Nick’s exhale is hitched. “And fire when ready.”

_ “You’re not ready,”  _ a new ghost with a familiar voice, one that is seemingly betraying him, that  _ he  _ seemingly betrayed, himself, whispers in his muffled ears. 

“The hell I’m not,” Nick hisses, and takes his first shot, dead on target.

* * *

Nick struts his way into Grissom’s office, head held high and wordlessly hands him the passing certificate that just needs Grissom’s signature.

Grissom glances upwards through his glasses, his eyes as red and pulsing as Nick’s were just the other day after the strain of the case, but Nick has a feeling his isn’t due to a computer screen.

Which is why he doesn’t really expect the words that come out of Grissom’s mouth, while weary in delivery, they’re touching in thought.

“Good work, Nicky, my boy. Here’s the address, Warrick and Sara could use some help,” Grissom exchanges Nick’s paper for an assignment slip that really, he’s had prepared for a few hours now, knowing Nick wouldn’t let him down.

He  _ never  _ would.

* * *

“I take it you qualified at the range!” 

“You take it right,” Nick nods, his smile disguised by his concentration of setting up the tripod to showcase his theory.

“What’d you shoot?” 

“260 out of 300,” he smiles in full, reaching into the trunk. “225’s passing, which, I believe, was  _ your  _ high score,” he adds with a teasing merge of his hands and a twinkle in his eyes. 

Warrick chuckles, and all finally seems right in the world again.


End file.
